Track Your Campaigns with the Help of Google Analytics URL Builder

If you are an internet marketer or an online business owner, then I’m pretty much sure that you are by now aware with the Google Analytics URL Builder tool that can be used to track your advertising campaigns efficiently in your Google Analytics account.

If you have just started out, and don’t have any idea about what it really is and how it can benefit your business, then this post is especially for you. With this amazing tool, you can build custom URLs for each of your campaigns, so that you can track them properly and sort out the most beneficial ones for better return on investment.

This tool will allow you to build custom links with many different utm tags which can be tracked easily and effectively with the help of Google Analytics.

For example, if you are running a custom campaign related to “Payday Loans” and have bought media campaigns for it on many different websites, then you can use the utm_source tag to track the visitors coming from a particular site on which you had bought an advertisement. Anyways, now let’s learn how to use this tool to build custom tracking links for your advertising campaigns:

(1) You can get access to the Google  Analytics URL Builder through this LINK. Once you have landed on the page, you are ready to create custom Analytics URLs with this tool.

(2) It’s not necessary that you must use this tool to create custom URLs. You can also use its UTM parameters and input them with the “?” of your URLs to be able to track them in Google Analytics. Anyways, let’s talk about this tool.

(3) While starting out with the tool, you will at first need to input your campaign link i.e. the web page URL to which it will lead.

(4) Now, in the next step, you will have to tweak your campaign tracking aspects i.e. the campaign source, campaign medium, campaign content etc.

(5) In the Campaign Source field, input a clue about the website you have advertised on. For example, if you have bought a campaign on this website, you can input “Web Traffic ROI” as your campaign source. Alternatively, you can also build the link manually by putting the campaign source parameter in your URL like this: http://www.yoursite.com/utm_source=webtrafficroi.

(6) In the same way, you can can make use of the Campaign Medium field to track the medium trough which people reaches your site. For example, you can set “referral” as your campaign medium to keep track of your source types effectively.

(7) Similarly, the Campaign Term field can be used to track the paid keywords of your AdWords campaigns from which people are visiting your website and the Campaign Content field can be used to differentiate the ads.

(8) At last, you will have to input the name of your particular campaign in the “Campaign Name” field.

(9) If you want to build these custom links manually, you can make use of the following URL parameters to track your campaigns:

  • utm_source (to track the source of the traffic)
  • utm_medium (to track the medium of the campaign traffic such as cpc, banner, text links etc.)
  • utm_campaign (to track the campaigns from which the traffic is being generated)
  • utm_term (to track the paid search keywords of your campaigns)
  • utm_content (to track the different campaigns of the same source & medium)

(10) At last, you can also use the Google Analytics URL Builder Google Chrome extension to get access to this tool immediately, right within your web browser, and build custom campaign links instantly.

That’s all for today. Let us know if you have faced this tool before, and how was your experience with it. Did you find it useful? Share your views about this tool, in the comments.

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10 comments

Jasmine April 26, 2013 - 12:36 am
This is a nice tool. But I usually just build the URL myself, by changing the utm_* parameters myself... easier and faster, no?
Sunday April 26, 2013 - 8:31 am
The steps detailed in this post to build custom tracking links for advertising campaign are well explained. However, the post did not provide detailed explanations on the types of advertising campaigns that could be tracked with the Google Analytics url builder. My question is this: does this tool track just about any type of campaign? The above comment and question has been shared in the IM Social site - Kingged.com, where this post was also "kingged" or crowned. Sunday - Kingged.com contributor http://www.kingged.com/track-your-campaigns-with-the-help-of-google-analytics-url-builder/
jean Lawrance April 26, 2013 - 8:34 am
Google analytic is one of the most important tool in SEO and its features are very effective to track any website's or blog's traffic in right way. Before read your post i was unaware about this URL builder feature and its functions. Now i will try to use this method to explore more about my website tracking.
Snide April 26, 2013 - 2:14 pm
I have seen this function in analytics a couple of times but never acctually understood it. Now i am going to try using it, thanks for the information :)
jay April 27, 2013 - 5:56 am
Heard at times about Google analytics, now it is the time to apply. I am going for it.
Kingged April 27, 2013 - 4:41 pm
I found and kingged this post on Kingged.com and was very impressed, especially the fact that this wonderful tool can help marketers to build custom URLs for each of their campaigns, and most importantly, help track them properly and sort out the most beneficial ones for better return on investment! Awesome. And of course - the fact that this is by Google makes it even more sweet. Google continues to thrill users. Thanks for detailing this the exact steps that anyone needs to take to make this work, Priyangshu. Well done! And thanks, ZK, for responding to the question asked on Kingged.com
Kingged April 27, 2013 - 5:08 pm
By the way, Priyangshu, I tried to read some of your posts on your site - geeks4share.com, but they were all returning 404 error. You might want to check it out.
Packers Movers Chandigarh April 29, 2013 - 5:35 am
Yes I know about Google Analytics URL builder But never used to it, this is time that I am going to Apply for my Campaign thanks for sharing it with us..
mark May 7, 2013 - 7:23 am
Great tips. Heard at times about Google analytics, now it is the time to apply.
hidal June 29, 2013 - 12:42 pm
This article will assist the internet visitors for creating new weblog or even a blog from start to end.
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